Talking of contracts
The school I work for just got one of the cheapest leased lines in the world, I think.
We called round several places to get a leased line (finally, it's not just me that's sick of balancing unreliable ADSL connections) and got lots of quotes back. Some negotiation later, my bursar comes in laughing to himself. Managed to wangle a three-year contract with a Virgin reseller, somehow for less than the cost that Virgin were reselling for. Cue lots of shouting on the phone and very, very, very stressed employees the other end.
Turns out, by the time the bursar was picking himself up off the floor of my office, he already had received a contract to those terms, signed it, sent it back, and got confirmation. And the termination clauses that said company had inserted were, shall we say, not biased to either party. It would probably cost them more than they would lose on the leased line to cancel, but only just, so we either get a hefty bundle of free cash to cover the entire length of the contract, or they have to supply us with a loss-making leased-line. Oh, and we got a free upgrade to the bandwidth because of some reason-or-other that means they'd have to supply an even-more expensive line than the loss-making one they were originally going to give us.
We have an installation date near Christmas, too. Should be interesting. They are currently trying to pull the old "well, it's near Christmas and the equipment in your road needs an upgrade" line, but given that the Virgin Media installation guy who surveyed us said that - if it wasn't that he needed the reseller's information and permission - he could have had it in in about an hour with no work necessary, that's line is unlikely to wash. They're obviously stalling, but we don't mind. A clause in the contract states activation dates, etc. and that if they aren't met, we get paid for that too.
I've seen that bursar almost reduce salesmen to tears in order to make a good price, and they usually end up regretting it, while we normally end up revelling in it.